Comcast Programming Leaves The Building
Comcast’s Xfinity branding continues, this time with Streampix, its new subscription video service that lets Xfinity video customers watch movies and TV shows even when away from home on multiple screens and devices…starting this week and priced at $4.99 a month (depending on the subscriber’s current plan).
This new service finally looks a lot like what TV Everywhere is supposed to look like. Comcast says Streampix complements the 75,000 TV shows and movies currently available on Xfinity On Demand, XfinityTV.com and through the Xfinity TV app. To launch Streampix, Comcast inked licensing agreements with the likes of Disney-ABC Television Group, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution and Cookie Jar Entertainment.
Comments Marcien Jenckes, senior vice president and GM/Video Services at Comcast. “Our goal is to consistently deliver greater value to our customers and to bring the best anytime, anywhere entertainment on multiple platforms. Streampix is another step moving TV Everywhere forward by giving customers access to an even greater library of popular choices to watch.”
Here’s what the service will offer so far:
>> Past Full Seasons of TV Series: 30 Rock, Grey’s Anatomy, Heroes, Lost, Married with Children, The Office, Ugly Betty and The Secret Life of an American Teenager
>> Movies: Analyze That; Brokeback Mountain; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Oceans Eleven; Stuart Little; When Harry Met Sally; The Big Lebowski
>> Kids’ Programming: Inspector Gadget, Paddington Bear, Strawberry Shortcake, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Wizards of Waverly Place
In the coming year, the Streampix service will be available on more gear, including Xbox 360 and Android-powered devices.
In separate but related news, as Steve Effros alluded earlier this week at the NCTC WEC (click here for more information), it looks like Google indeed plans to add TV to its proposed broadband service in the Kansas City market. The company’s subsidiary, Google Fiber, recently filed applications in Missouri and Kansas to operate a video service.
Reports say Google’s Kansas app says it "will utilize national and regional video headend facilities" – essentially programming collection points – "to send IPTV" – a television-over-Internet technology like that used in AT&T’s Uverse service – "across a private (Internet protocol) network to subscribers."